Blind Alley is a 3D maze program that I wrote with the QuickBasic 4.5 compiler.  Okay, yes, it is a DOS program, but I've tested it in WFW3.11, Win95, Win98, and WinME, and it runs just fine in those environments, although it usually needs to run full-screen, due to the graphics mode I chose.  If you have Windows XP, please let me know if it works for you.

   The current version is 0.70.  Now it has more color, so you're not stuck in plain, old black and white.  This is a beta version that is free to download.  Since this is a beta version, you download it at your own risk.  I've checked it on different systems that I have access to, but that's hardly an exhaustive test.  If you download it, please let me know if it works for you, and what system you're running it on.  That information will help me to improve the program.

To install, just download and unzip the file to the directory that you want it in.  blindaly.exe is the main executable file.  I've also included the source code for you QuickBasic programmers out there, along with some notes about writing the program.

    Verstion 0.70 finally fixes the appearance of the entrance and exit to the maze.  No more Twilight Zone!
  With version 0.68, the user can change the program's colors from the main screen, and the color choices are saved in an initialization file.  I've also added a screensaver module, but it's currently hard-coded to activate at 5 minutes.  I'll add a user-configurable option later.
   A full version history is available in the readme.txt file that comes with the program.

I wrote it because I really liked the old Labyrinth program on the Commodore 64, and while I've discovered some similar programs, none of them had the look and feel that I wanted.  I didn't want anything fancy like monsters or aliens, I just wanted plenty of passageways and deadends to comtemplate.
  I actually started the program in the mid-90s, but I didn't make much progress for a long time for a couple of reasons.  While I had the source code to Labyrinth (it was considered public domain software), I never really figured out its tightly compressed spaghetti code and how it worked.  I had to basically start from scratch, and that took me a while because I'm hardly an experienced programmer.
  Of course, other things in my life kept me busy, too, like getting a divorce, changing jobs, and being active in politics.  My real breakthrough occurred when I came across some maze-creation algorithms on the internet.  Before that, I really had no idea how to randomly generate a maze.  Now, while there are a few more things that I want to add to improve the program, all the basics are there.

-DOS or higher, VGA.
The program was written in MS-DOS 6.22 on a computer with an AMD K6-200Mhz processor.  I've tested it out on a machine as low as a 386-25Mhz, but even 286's should be able to run the program as long as you have a VGA graphics card.  But be careful:  Larger mazes take longer for the program to generate.  On a 486 that could mean several minutes.  Older computers could take much longer.  I recommend starting out with a small, 5x5 maze and gradually increasing the size to get used to how fast it takes on your computer.